"Jurassic World," "Inside Out," and Living Authentically as Human Beings

DISCLAIMER: I said the b-word a couple times in this post. Sorry if that makes you uncomfortable. But the word is part of a popular name for a common trope used for female characters and to me it is a powerful representation of the problems I have with portrayals of women in movies.

Also, SPOILERS.

What a great time of the year for movies! No, not Oscar season—summer. I mean, Jurassic World just broke a record, so we know plenty of people went to see that. I did (and then I guest-hosted on a podcast reviewing it last week; it will hopefully be up on the blog soon). Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about what the movie taught me, and also what it failed to explain; which, let’s face it, was a lot of things. But what I want to talk about most from that long list of the unexplained is sexism and stereotypes (as maybe two sides of the same thing).

Some of you may remember the uproar when one of the first clips was released. Yes, there was hype over the movie. But there was also an unexpected rousing discussion on sexism, led by filmmaker Joss Whedon. He derided this clip on Twitter for recalling 70s-era sexism, featuring a “stiff” of a female, and a “lifeforce” of a male hero. And I’m going to say it, I think he was right. I didn’t know about Whedon’s comment before I saw the movie, and I thought the same thing during that scene. (It’s the one where Claire shows up at Owen’s house to recruit him to check out I.Rex’s paddock, and we learn about their “romantic” history.) I think it was supposed to be funny, but it was actually really uncomfortable for me. As I watched, I didn’t see romantic or funny. I saw a Frigid Bitch and a suave Rugged Man (which I guess was supposed to be romantic?). More than that, I saw workplace sexual harassment (which I guess was supposed to be funny?). Which, in real life, is uncomfortable for everyone involved, especially the object of the sexual attention, also for the witnesses, although not, it seems, for the harasser. Wow, okay, spot on portrayal of sexual harassment, filmmakers. Except… the part about it being romantic and funny? 

I’m not sure what the filmmakers were thinking here. Apparently, the director (Colin Trevorrow) said that he didn’t disagree with Whedon in an interview. Read more about this here. Trevorrow continued with this qualifier: “[The movie] starts with characters that are almost archetypes; stereotypes that are deconstructed as the story progresses.”

Only, I don’t think that they were successful in deconstructing the stereotypes. I mean, sure Claire became not so frigid by the end, sporting dirty clothes and boasting a boyfriend. And yes, it’s great that she cared more about her family at the end but 1) duh. Any decently-written character would have changed after an experience like that, and any character that we are supposed to like would recognize the importance of family just like Claire so 2) that is not deconstructing a stereotype. That is exactly the stereotypical journey of the Frigid Bitch character who is actually lucky enough to have a character arc. It’s also a resurrection of the Family Versus Career trope. It's fine for a woman to want to be a mother and choose not to have a career. Extending that, it's fine for a woman to have any "feminine" quality. I don't want to denigrate or devalue any traditionally feminine quality more than it already has been. Feminine does not equal bad. What I'm complaining about here is one-dimensional characters that reinforce hurtful stereotypes. At the end, the movie only REINFORCED that a capable woman in a corporate setting IS in fact a Frigid Bitch, which you should never be. I don’t get this. The qualities Claire had at the beginning: strong, strong-willed, brave, hardworking, capable of leadership—these were the exact same qualities she had at the end. Apparently the problem was the context in which she was using them. In other words, these great qualities are somehow inappropriate in a business setting. Only a maternal setting is appropriate for those qualities. Otherwise, you are a bitch and you need to change.

And Claire certainly read as the type of character who had to change. But here’s the problem I have with that—she wasn’t really doing anything wrong in the beginning of the movie. As Kelly Lawler wrote for USA Today in this article, “her great crime is having the audacity to do things like not know her nephews' ages, ask her employee (Chris Pratt's Owen) to do a task, and take care of the business of the massive theme park she has been entrusted to run.” But the movie tried really hard to make her seem wrong, damaged, and ridiculous. Sure she was a little uptight. But not everyone can be as laid back as Chris Pratt. Especially not someone who is supposed to be the one in charge; not to mention the fact that she is working in an extremely high-stakes environment, dealing with something that could endanger the lives of thousands of people and also cost billions of dollars if she messes up. Also not to mention the fact that she is a woman whose co-workers, bosses, and underlings all are around 90% male. This is a tough situation to be in. The reality is that because of history, social constructs, and movies like this, working women have to combat stereotypes and work extra hard to be accepted in business settings. Women are less likely to be hired at all if employers think that they will be taking time off work to take care of family. So yeah, looking back on it, she was justified. I don’t even blame her for not spending time with her nephews. Because for one, “this was supposed to be a family trip,” and the parents backed out last minute because of the divorce. This means Claire was never supposed to be babysitting two kids. All in all, her character arc was basically external, which made it not very powerful. She just reacted to a crazy situation; It caused her to prioritize saving her family, but it really wasn't a change--it was just constructed by the filmmakers to look like one. And to round it out, they gave her the boyfriend that she said she didn't want (no means yes, anyone?). 

(If you want more on Claire, you should DEFINITELY take a look at this article. "Jurassic World" Battles Sexism Claims, in Heels.)

Furthermore, stereotypical Owen didn’t change either. He was always and was still the rugged macho hero type.  Even though Claire saved him multiple times, he still ended the movie as the alpha male, and Claire handed him back the reigns to lead her out into the sunset. He went through a tiny dip in the middle when he momentarily lost his raptors, but he got through that by repeatedly putting Claire in her place and showing her the ropes in dealing with dinos. Since he was already into Claire, he didn’t have to learn to value her as she was. He just had to give her some sex and groom her into someone who would accept him; he didn’t have to change. In fact, stereotypical Owen was vindicated, because he got the girl and he never made a mistake or looked stupid, and because we all think he’s hot, and because he’s the alpha of a raptor pack. Albeit, a now mostly dead raptor pack, but still, that’s the coolest thing we have ever seen, and if you go by certain internet reactions, it seems to be the most memorable thing about the movie. See here.

I mean, isn’t deconstructing stereotypes supposed to be a little more… involved?

And, also, can we talk about Vincent D’Onofrio’s character? Hoskins was just written to be a villain. He didn’t change, except that there’s maybe a small chance that in the split-second before his death by a raptor he set loose he realized he was an idiot. Or the kids, who maybe changed a tiny bit. (Did they? The only things I can think of are 1) they are closer as a family—which, duh—and 2) teenager Zach isn’t texting anymore (but his phone is broken soo…). I mean, also they escaped a dinosaur island, which hopefully changed them into more empowered individuals and didn’t give them PTSD, but again, stereotype not deconstructed.) 

And I really want to talk about the 4 women other than Claire that are integral to the story (and by that I mean not important and not interesting, and also the only other female characters in the movie). 1) The girlfriend. I don’t think she was even named, although I might be wrong about that. She was just so boring that I didn’t care. She was 1000000000% stereotypical teenage girlfriend, complete with teary-eyes and needy texting. She wasn’t even in the movie for a second scene, so she obviously didn’t get deconstructed. The only good thing I can say is that at least it meant one more part for a female actor to play. Without that part, featured female actors might have been outnumbered by female CGI dinosaurs. Oh wait.*(see end of post). 2) The mother. I thought Judy Greer did a great job with this part. But remember, her subtle character choices were probably not in the written script. I would like to know whether her crying was. I think she cried in at least two of the four scenes she was in and was at least on the verge of tears in the other two. I guess this makes sense given the whole divorce thread, which wasn’t fleshed out at all, making her come off as a stereotypical weepy mother. Asso annoying! Why was she tearing into Claire like that? It just came off as silly to me. As far as I can tell, her sole job as an actor was to be a concerned mother with no other defining attributes to detract or distract from her role as plot-driver to more important characters. In the podcast, a fellow host pointed out that she was not a stereotypical mother because she had a job (that scene where she calls Claire from an office building and cries because Claire is not with the kids). However, I later realized that the office building was NOT her place of employment. That scene was her meeting with lawyers to negotiate the divorce, which was apparently the reason for sending the kids away or whatever. So, it now makes sense why she was so emotional, but doesn’t deconstruct the stereotype. 3) The assistant. Zara. I didn’t know her name in the movie, because, again, boring. I only remember it because of this article talking about her death (which was probably the most interesting death in the movie, but read the article about it because it will make you think!) She was another plot device, only there so that Claire could not be there, because that was necessary to her character arc. Maybe a mix between the Frigid Bitch type and the self-absorbed Teenage Gossip Girl type. And nothing more than that. Certainly no arc, because unlike the Big Bad villain, she didn’t even really deserve her death (at least not the way it happened—read the article). And 4) the girl-next-office. According to IMDB her name is Vivian. I don’t really know much about this stereotype, but I do think it is an emerging stereotype. It’s the girl-next-door, only in an office setting. Read Pam from the office, etc. This is the female stereotype that got most deconstructed, but it only got deconstructed for a gag. By rights that boy-next-office all-around-good-nerd stereotype Lowery should have got to kiss her, but she turned him down. Progress. All in the name of laughs.

Then there was Mr. Simon Masrani, the CEO. We at least got to see him take charge, and then have doubts, and then rise to the occasion in bravery (I guess) and then crash and burn literally. Still nothing surprising, but still probably the most interesting, although maybe the worst written; he seemed a little all-over-the-place and lacking motive. I dunno, was I supposed to like him or not? Actually I take it back: he wasn’t the most interesting. That honor goes to Henry Wu, the doctor played by B.D. Wong. I really wanted to hear more about his motives and ideas of ethics. He was the one character who didn’t really read as a stereotype to me, although he didn’t get a character arc either.

Honestly, the characters would have sucked a lot more if the actors playing them hadn’t done as well.

Anyway, this is probably enough analysis for you to get that I hated the stereotypes, I didn’t think it worked, it confused me; I thought it was lazy filmmaking, and I thought it was sexist (and to make it clear, sexist against men and women, because social constructs of gender can be really harmful, and none of the characters went against that grain in a meaningful way.)

One more caveat. Please don’t tell me that it doesn’t matter because it’s a summer blockbuster about dinosaurs. I’m saying rise above the dinosaurs! It can be done. I want to use my brain, even when it’s warm outside! (And so do you if you are reading this). Here’s one more great article if you still want to make that argument. Here. 

So anyway, now to the real question. I was still trying to form my thoughts about this as the week went on. It was important to me, because I had to argue about it. No one seemed to really be on-board with my distaste (to be clear, I did enjoy the movie… I just didn’t like it very much). I just didn’t get it. Why didn’t the stereotypes bother anyone else? And then it hit me as I was watching Inside Out this weekend—it’s because stereotypes are in everything. Or most everything, at least. I loved Inside out, especially its message about sadness and hope. But even in a movie that had 99% on Rotten Tomatoes, had raving reviews, and was supposed to be so perfect, there was room for stereotypes—and, wait for it—sexism. I’m talking really about this scene from the early trailers, where we get to see inside the heads of the father and mother characters. The father, who’s main character point is that he is really busy with work, has eyes only for the sports team. His emotions act like athletes and soldiers. The mother, a nurturing stay-at-home-mom, has the stereotypical sitcom mom objective in this scene: cajole the husband into being a good father because he is obviously clueless and incapable, although it is also somehow necessary for him to take control regardless. Her emotions act, well, like moms. All of them.

In this scene at least, the characters were reduced to sexist stereotypes. Because that is what is funny. Really, look around you. It was true in both Jurassic World and Inside Out. This is what we think comedy is. Is there something wrong with that? I think yes, in some ways. But in other ways, I genuinely don’t know.

We have had archetypes in our stories basically for forever. They help us to learn, understand, and remember. We seem to be using and seeing archetypes, tropes, and stereotypes as basically the same thing, but are they? Do we need any of them? Sometimes characters seem to lack direction, like Masrani the pilot-wannabe, if they aren’t steroetypical. And, like I said, a lot of comedy plays with stereotypes… It seems clear to me that the most moving films for me of late go against or deconstruct stereotypes in some way. But it’s rare to have a film be completely devoid of stereotypes, even by the end. 

So here are my questions for all you writers, filmmakers, actors, others. How do you approach stereotypes? What is the right way to use stereotypes and/or archetypes in creating a film or other work? Is it important to deconstruct stereotypes? Should we try to get rid of stereotypes in everything? What is inherently wrong with stereotypes? Is there anything inherently right with them? 

And what about sexism? Aren’t most stereotypes sexist by nature? Is it fair to say that most everything is sexist? Then is there a purpose to even pointing it out? I think there is, but how do you convince the people who just see it as normal?

I think this is important, especially concerning summer blockbuster-type movies. Because this is what the masses are seeing. This is what regular people are building their understanding of the world on. So shouldn’t it be better?

*So to tally:

I’ve mentioned 5 women characters here. That’s all of those, not counting extras, obviously. (Claire, Mom Karen, girlfriend, Assistant Zara, and employee (IMDB says her name is Vivian). Oh, and the mosasaurus announcer was a girl. Woohoo, 6! And I think one of the three investors at the beginning was female. So 7.

I can’t tell how many of the dinos are female. I.Rex is for sure (1). The internet seems to think all four of the raptors are, although I can’t confirm that. At least two for sure (5). The trainer refers to the mosasaurus as a girl (6) The T-Rex is also a girl; according to the promotional website (jurassicworld.com), it is the same one from the first movie (7). And it’s possible that all the others are female as well, like in the first movie. Not sure on that one, since there were males in the other movies. So, probably 7, maybe more, 5 at absolute minimum, and it’s not looking good for the human females.

All the rest of the main characters are male. There are the 7 mentioned here (Owen, Hoskins, Zach, Gray, employee Lowery, Masrani, and Wu). Then everyone else. Barry, the other raptor trainer (8); the employee who fell into the raptor cage (9); the two guys who died first (11); the employee running the gyrosphere ride (12); Jimmy Fallon (13); the father (14); the control room security guard (15); the other two investors at the beginning (17); Hoskins’s lackey (18); the flight instructor (19); and most of those even had lines.

Then there were featured extras like margarita guy (Jimmy Buffet, apparently) and the five or so from the I.rex control squad that died (there was a girl on the squad but I don’t count her as featured because she didn’t die or have the camera on her face), the 2 army guys in Masrani’s helicopter (they actually also had lines), the other 4 army guys in the other helicopter, the 12 or so men shooting down the pteronadons, the 10ish InGen men who took over the control room, the guy who gets killed by the raptor when Claire is driving the ambulance, and the guys talking on top of the gate when Zach and Gray come back to the park in the car they fixed.

On the female side for featured extras, you have the three little girls at the petting zoo. Then there’s the four or so teenaged girls that Zach stares at at different times during the film. And that’s basically it.

As far as extra extras go, I hope that the true crowd scenes are equal. You may or may not know that this is often not the case. The employees, though, were definitely predominantly male. It’s difficult to count people in scenes when you can’t hit the pause button, but I was really curious, so I did my best and wrote it down during the movie: I only noticed two women working in the control room, besides Vivian. That’s about 3 out of 15. As I said earlier, the InGen employees who replaced them were exclusively male. Again mentioned earlier, for the I.Rex control squad it was about 15 to 1; the other dino squad, which went up against the pteronadons, were all male. There were about 15 there as well. The workers at the raptor enclosure were nearly all male (there’s the three I already mentioned, a few more wielding tranq guns, and then some watching/walking in the background. I counted one, possibly two women in the very background, making it about 2 to 20. There were about 8 construction workers, all male. There were about 10 men at the gate I mentioned earlier, with no women. Then there are the InGen employees who landed on the beach. I found 1 woman there, out of what was easily 60 people. (Just so you can keep up, that brings the count to 5 or 6 women out of 160 extras. WUT.)

The extras in the laboratory scenes seemed to be about equal, which is awesome! Yay! There were about 12 people in there, which doubles our count of women extras. The petting zoo also seemed equal, maybe 3 women and 3 men. SO roughly 15 out of 175. 15 compared to 160. I’ll give you a hint, it’s less than 10%.

Obviously, when you add the scenes of the crowd at the park in, the percentage goes way up; but, those were the roles least featured, so I still think this is sad.

"Hedwig and the Angry Inch" And Me

DISCLAIMER: if you don’t know what this is, I'll introduce you. Here. But WARNING: may be shocking to some viewers. In a good way or bad, but just so you know, it’s rated R “for sexual content and language.” It's in the same vein as Rocky Horror Picture Show, but a little more emotional. Not for the faint of heart, but you can come watch the movie at my house if you want because I love it.

It’s been about three weeks now since I saw the show live on Broadway for the second time and I still can’t stop thinking about it. What an incredible experience! I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to the people behind the show, though they will probably never read this, for giving me such an incredible gift. I won’t pretend to know everything about what went into writing and performing Hedwig. In fact, I very much am trying to figure out how one would go about creating such a fantastic show (for personal reasons). But it meant a lot to me, and I will never be able to thank the people behind it enough.

I want to talk for a bit about what makes this show so special. And I’m going to try to be honest about it. I never thought that I could relate so much to a person like Hedwig. It wasn’t her Rock ‘N’ Roll persona, her East German heritage, or even her history with prostitution that was so foreign to me. It was the fact that she’s transgender. With her drag makeup and rhinestone studded denim, she inhabits a skin so different from mine. Growing up cis-gendered, I always felt some discord in my feelings towards gender-queer persons. I wanted to love them, but I just couldn’t understand them. And I’m a person that just has to understand things. I couldn’t get why anyone would act in ways that I don’t. I mean, come on Hedwig, what’s with the act. Why all the drama, the abrasiveness, the narcissism? I admit, I’m a judger. But seeing Hedwig’s story and feeling my pain over again with her so strongly, I finally found my love for people who display their story differently from me. And now, instead of finding it slightly annoying, I find it absolutely incredible that members of the human family can feel such similar feelings and yet deal with them and display them so differently. Not only did I get to know Hedwig on that stage, I got to be inspired by her.

Sitting in that room with all those people, I felt Hedwig’s pain. Not because I felt sympathetic to the character, but because I felt that I was the character. I was Hedwig, I was Yitzhak. I could sing those songs with just as much passion, although probably not as beautifully. I wasn’t just sitting and watching, I was living and reliving. This in itself was an incredible gift.

One of the most powerful moments for me was the song “Long Grift.” This was my favorite song the first time I watched the show, because the lyrics come from a place of such pain. But what I wasn’t expecting going into my second time was to have an experience during the short song. I got to watch in awe as Yitzhak (Rebecca Naomi Jones) began, nervous and unsure. Soon, she found her place in the song as the victim, living the words as the pain showed in her eyes. And then, something amazing happened. That pain was transformed into joy as she was finally able to tell her story, and to own her feelings. And I thought this is me. I had a revelation. These are feelings that I forgot that I feel—wounds I had hoped would heal if I just put them away and became someone else. I still feel them. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t find joy. What an incredible discovery! I understood this even as I was feeling those feelings I had hated so much. As Hedwig sang “Exquisite Corpse,” my other favorite song, I was falling and spinning with her. So lost in the cacophony of those feelings. Trying to feel them out and let them take me over as I hadn’t in such a long time. I won’t lie, I sobbed. Half of me was suspended in my seat, but the other half was reliving all of the feelings I had ever felt in rapid succession as the drums beat out the racing rhythm of my heart and the blinking lights followed the path of the tears down my face. And then the music stopped. I was lost. Thankfully, the moments that followed next were slow and quiet. And then finally, Hedwig sang “Midnight Radio.” Somehow, I mostly overlooked this song the first time I saw the show. Maybe I was distracted by Darren’s bare body. In fact, that’s probably it (how embarrassing). In my memory of that first time, it bled into the curtain call and was the signal for me to shake off the feelings and get ready for the real world. But now, I am sure that I will never have another favorite moment. I hadn’t noticed the first time how beautiful and hopeful the song is. I mean, really, I should have, but I needed that intense pain right before to even register how important this moment was. Because for such a tragic story, what I took away was hope. Hope for me, and hope for the whole world—that one day everyone might understand, and that we could hold on to each other.



*EDIT
I made a mistake and I want to take this moment to both own up to it and try to remedy it. We live in a culture of sexual objectification. As someone who advocates against this culture, I feel the need to address something in the original post. This is not to invalidate the post, but to build upon it (because I could talk about my experience with Hedwig forever). So here it is:
The only time I mentioned Darren specifically here was to talk about his body. Not only is this even more embarrassing for me, it is also unfair to him. I was trying to keep the post short and to connect to other people through self-effacing humor; but anyway, I would rather have a long post and be a better human than lose such a perfect opportunity to point out how we are unfair to people in every-day ways.
So, here is a more perfect account of my experience during Darren’s performance—and I’ll still try to keep it short. Darren is extremely talented; it’s not inappropriate to talk about his body, because he uses it masterfully in the show as an acting tool. I just want to focus on the artful way he uses it rather than my attraction to it. The show is about being sexy, in a big way; but that’s not all it’s about. It’s about exploring yourself and so much more that I can’t even articulate. Darren gave so much to the role, and I felt like he was giving that gift to each and every audience member.
The first time I saw the show, I was absolutely drawn to Darren’s body in Midnight Radio. Yes because he’s dreamy and I’m a sucker, but also because he was doing something incredible with it, and it was transfixing. He was showing us who he thought he was. Who Hedwig was. It was like witnessing the transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly; yes it was really that transcendent. Maybe because the whole show seems in a way like a butterfly transitioning back into a caterpillar. As Hedwig takes off her drag, piece by piece, it’s like she’s losing parts of herself. She is transitioning to something else, but it’s something that doesn’t fit into a box the way a wig does. More than that, she is finding herself in the pieces, exploring where they fit into her, smashed together with her idea of herself, and the emotions that are always changing within her. And this is where Darren takes us in the end of the show. Exploring his body, disconnecting and reconnecting, deciding whether he can walk without heels, choosing whether he wants to share his bare heart with us or hide it, not forcing his body into a way of behaving, but letting his body speak to him, and to us. And then finally honoring Hedwig and all she stands for in Midnight Radio. The most powerful line of the entire show my second time watching it was Darren’s quiet and deliberate delivery at the end of the bridge in Midnight Radio. “Here’s to Patti, and Tina… And me.” So here’s to Hedwig, and Darren: Thank you.